Relatives of Shail Upadhya, inset, are contesting his will after he left his $5 million estate to Baroness von Langendorff. The Baroness says she and Upadhya are longtime friends.Film Magic; Patrick McMullan (inset)

But the baroness told me on the phone from Palm Beach, “We were very close for 30 years. He spent every single holiday with me.”

As for the half-siblings, “They had serious political differences. He didn’t see them for 25 years.”

Several friends came forward since the suit was filed last week to testify to the baroness’ kindness and generosity.

“She has befriended many people over the years, and helped pay their medical bills,” said one admirer. “I heard she once bought a friend a small house in Southampton.”

One man about town remembers her from the ’60s hot spot El Morocco, where the redhead, newly arrived from Holland and known as Gabrielle Lagerwall, displayed her charms.

“She hired a press agent and Dorothy Kilgallen wrote about her in 1962,” said my source. “She was beautiful, with milky skin, and people nicknamed her ‘Snow White.’ It was rumored she took milk baths.”

When the baroness isn’t at the Pierre Hotel on Fifth Avenue, or her 42-acre estate on Cold Spring Harbor, she can be found at the Hotel Hermitage in Monte Carlo, the Bristol in Paris, or the Colony Hotel in Palm Beach.

The baroness lost some of her incredible jewelry collection in a heist of 42 safe deposit boxes at the Pierre in 1972, and some other gems in a robbery 10 years later in a suite upstairs.

So, those enormous emeralds she wears aren’t real, said her friend. The real gems are in a safe. “She had exact copies made. The copies are so good, you can’t tell the difference.”